Well, I did end up finding that two batches of chocolate chip cookie dough made just over 5 dozen cookies, and one batch of oatmeal raisin made exactly 3 dozen. I'll lose a few because I'm gonna let each kid try one, as they've been salivating over them all day and asking oh-so-casually if they might lick the bowl when I'm done, etc. So I should end up with 8 dozen and I'll hope that's enough! Or do you think I should make one more batch of chocolate chip cookies? It would give me another 2.5 dozen. They're maybe a little larger than some people make them, but not huge. Thoughts?

For the cake, I bought 4 cake mixes: two yellow, one french vanilla, and one chocolate. I'll do the yellows together in one pan to make one large double-cake. I'll put the french vanilla and chocolate together. I still haven't decided whether to marble them or to just have one half french vanilla and the other half chocolate. What do you guys think? I think the marbling would be more interesting, but if you think enough people would prefer to have chocolate by itself, or that people wouldn't like that combination, I'll keep them separate. I'm going to do buttercream icing for both cakes, as it's the simplest and the cheapest. I'll probably keep things fairly simple with decorating (I love to decorate cakes, but that's not time well-spent when I haven't managed to find a pair of dress shoes for my husband or any of the 7-month-old's clothes yet). I'll probably do each cake a solid color, and some coordinating colors to make a bit of trim on the sides, and then say "Congratulations, <Husband's name>!" or something in the center (I'll ask him what he wants them to say). If he was making something interesting like colonel, I could make the little symbol on the cake, but his rank is just two bars.

Good grief, I can't imagine doing all of this on top of moving. Military wives are multi-taskers, to be sure.

You could always do the cake frosting in the color of his branch--my mom did a lot of yellow, because Dad was Armor.

Thanks, jpcher. I'll put the french vanilla and chocolate together. I still haven't decided whether to marble them or to just have one half french vanilla and the other half chocolate. What do you guys think?

I say keep them separate (but then again, I was going to vote for oatmeal raisin. )

Curious, though, how would you keep them separate in one pan? Do you have a pan divider?

Oh. Wait. I do like the marble idea. It is a bit classy. (This way I voted correctly no matter what you choose. )

What I've done before is pour the chocolate in one end, the vanilla in the other - at the same time; it's kind of tricky. Then I marbled it in the middle where they meet. So you could have a piece of chocolate cake or a piece of white cake or a piece of marble from the middle.

A 2" X 2" piece of cake is pretty standard when figuring out the amounts so I think your cake calculations are fine. I'd plan on 2 cookies per person. With all your little ones, I'm sure any leftovers won't go waste.

You are SUPERWOMAN! to manage to get all this done, on top of trying to unpack and look after 4 kids! Congrats to your DH.

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After cleaning out my Dad's house, I have this advice: If you haven't used it in a year, throw it out!!!!.

What we do, to make both sort of separate in the same pan, is to tilt the pan a little to on side, usually by putting the empty box from the cake mix under it, as it's just the right size. Then pour in one of the mixes into the low end. Then pour in the other mix into the high end, gradually pulling out the box from underneath and bringing the cake pan back to a flat position as you do this. Cake mix is pretty viscous and will move rather slowly, so this works pretty well. You end up with a few pieces in the center that have, say, chocolate at the bottom and yellow at the top, but some people like that mix so it works out fine. Then we serve from each end of the cake at the same time so people can pick.

Now my husband is saying that there might be fewer people and maybe I should just make one cake (two cake mixes, 11 x 15). Maybe this was his plan all along and this was just a ploy for me to make extra cookies? I'll have to ask him if he wants yellow, marble, or vanilla/chocolate, then. I'll save the other mixes for my birthday next week.

I might look and see how complicated a military design would be. With making just one cake, something simple might be doable.

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Emily is 9 years old! 1/07Jenny is 7 years old! 10/08Charlotte is 5 years old! 8/10Megan is 3 years old! 10/12Lydia is 1 year old! 12/14

Reception is over, and I survived! It ended up being not too many people, closer to 30 than 50 I'd say, so there were TONS of cookies and it's a good thing I didn't make both double cakes! I sent a tray of cookies to their lunchroom and hopefully earned my husband some brownie points for that. I did a marble cake using the vanilla and chocolate (they were actually French Vanilla and German Chocolate, which I found particularly amusing in a marble cake ("Look, they're fighting over territory again! There goes Alsace!")

Everything turned out well. There was plenty of food and drink but it didn't feel excessive, and he made a nice speech.

Thanks for the compliments of getting so much done! On top of that, I left that evening for a homeschool convention the next morning that was 2 hours away. And then had my nephew's birthday party last night, also 2 hours away (different direction). So it's been a busy week! Looking forward to getting back to routine soon.

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Emily is 9 years old! 1/07Jenny is 7 years old! 10/08Charlotte is 5 years old! 8/10Megan is 3 years old! 10/12Lydia is 1 year old! 12/14

Reception is over, and I survived! It ended up being not too many people, closer to 30 than 50 I'd say, so there were TONS of cookies and it's a good thing I didn't make both double cakes! I sent a tray of cookies to their lunchroom and hopefully earned my husband some brownie points for that. I did a marble cake using the vanilla and chocolate (they were actually French Vanilla and German Chocolate, which I found particularly amusing in a marble cake ("Look, they're fighting over territory again! There goes Alsace!")

Everything turned out well. There was plenty of food and drink but it didn't feel excessive, and he made a nice speech.

Thanks for the compliments of getting so much done! On top of that, I left that evening for a homeschool convention the next morning that was 2 hours away. And then had my nephew's birthday party last night, also 2 hours away (different direction). So it's been a busy week! Looking forward to getting back to routine soon.

Reception is over, and I survived! It ended up being not too many people, closer to 30 than 50 I'd say, so there were TONS of cookies and it's a good thing I didn't make both double cakes! I sent a tray of cookies to their lunchroom and hopefully earned my husband some brownie points for that. I did a marble cake using the vanilla and chocolate (they were actually French Vanilla and German Chocolate, which I found particularly amusing in a marble cake ("Look, they're fighting over territory again! There goes Alsace!")

Everything turned out well. There was plenty of food and drink but it didn't feel excessive, and he made a nice speech.

Thanks for the compliments of getting so much done! On top of that, I left that evening for a homeschool convention the next morning that was 2 hours away. And then had my nephew's birthday party last night, also 2 hours away (different direction). So it's been a busy week! Looking forward to getting back to routine soon.

No pictures, sorry! I didn't think about it ahead of time. The decorating was nothing special, though. I iced it in solid white, put blue trim around the sides (both at the top edges of the cake and around the bottom where it touched the cakeboard), and wrote in blue, "Congratulations, Capt <lastname>!" and blue captain's bars. Nothing too fancy. I did use a red foil on the cakeboard, so with that and the white cake and blue trim I thought it gave it a bit of a patriotic touch.

And yes, we do have a routine, if you'd believe it! I have kids who don't do so well with no routine. So I try to keep doing at least a small amount of school as close to the end as possible, and now that we've unpacked enough stuff to be functional (and I found the baby's clothes!), we'll start school up again on Monday). They'll be delighted when they see all the new schoolbooks I got for them to do. Delighted, I tell you! I'm sure they'll like learning logic...

I think the best thing for being a military family is having enough kids that they have playmates/best friends in each other. It really helps with transitions, because they don't lose *all* their friends at once.

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Emily is 9 years old! 1/07Jenny is 7 years old! 10/08Charlotte is 5 years old! 8/10Megan is 3 years old! 10/12Lydia is 1 year old! 12/14

No pictures, sorry! I didn't think about it ahead of time. The decorating was nothing special, though. I iced it in solid white, put blue trim around the sides (both at the top edges of the cake and around the bottom where it touched the cakeboard), and wrote in blue, "Congratulations, Capt <lastname>!" and blue captain's bars. Nothing too fancy. I did use a red foil on the cakeboard, so with that and the white cake and blue trim I thought it gave it a bit of a patriotic touch.

And yes, we do have a routine, if you'd believe it! I have kids who don't do so well with no routine. So I try to keep doing at least a small amount of school as close to the end as possible, and now that we've unpacked enough stuff to be functional (and I found the baby's clothes!), we'll start school up again on Monday). They'll be delighted when they see all the new schoolbooks I got for them to do. Delighted, I tell you! I'm sure they'll like learning logic...

I think the best thing for being a military family is having enough kids that they have playmates/best friends in each other. It really helps with transitions, because they don't lose *all* their friends at once.

O/T, but I agree with the bolded. I am one of seven kids, and Dad was in the Army, and it really helped when moving to a new place to know you had your whole support system right there with you. I'm an introvert and most of my siblings are extroverts, and they would make friends easily. And then I'd get included in their activities by default. Made things so much easier for me.

Ooh, 7 kids! We're just over halfway there! Yeah, especially since my husband really wants to get posted overseas next, or "at least" Alaska. Heh. Who knows. People in his line of work usually end up in California or elsewhere in the western U.S. My second daughter is more of an extrovert than my oldest. She's great at remembering names, too. My oldest? "Mommy, I have a new best friend at <activity>!" Me: "Oh, really? What's her name?" Emily: "I don't know." Whereas my second, as we arrive at an activity. "Hi, Adam! Hi, Eric! Hi, Thomas! Hi, Maddie! Hi, Whitley! Hi, Emma!" I swear she knows the name of every child in her class and most of her sister's, too. Emily will ask Jenny for the name of a kid in Emily's class! And then of course the two of them together are braver than either alone.

Fortunately, we just moved into a house with two little girls their age next door! The kids have all been having a ball and the transition has been made much easier. Unfortunately, the two little girls are going to South America for the entire summer (to visit their mom's family). So we won't have them around for the summer, but at least they'll be back and they'll be around the rest of the time!

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Emily is 9 years old! 1/07Jenny is 7 years old! 10/08Charlotte is 5 years old! 8/10Megan is 3 years old! 10/12Lydia is 1 year old! 12/14